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The Text of Peele's David and Bethsabe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arthur M. Sampley
Arthur M. Sampley*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas
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Extract

The text of David and Bethsabe, as editors of Peele have long been aware, presents a series of perplexing problems: several passages in the play are directly contradictory, the movements and speeches of certain characters in Scene ix are quite unexplainable by any rules of drama or logic, one of the choruses holds out a promise, which is not fulfilled, of presenting David's death, and within the text occurs a misplaced fragment of a lost scene. Dyce, Manly, and Greg have commented on these discrepancies in the play, and the students of Peele have recognized the cruces involved. Yet in spite of the suggestions of P. A. Daniel and Professor Manly and the detailed studies of Dr. Dannenberg and Dr. Neitzel, no satisfactory solution of the difficulties in the quarto text has been found.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1931 , pp. 659 - 671
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

1 See especially editions of Peele by Dyce (1861); Bullen (1888); Manly in Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama, Vol. ii (1897); Greg in the Malone Society Reprints (1912). Cf. Bruno Neitzel, George Peele's “David and Bethsabe” (1904); Max Dannenberg, Die Verwendung des biblischen Stoffes von David und Bathseba im englischen Drama (1905); and P. H. Cheffaud, George Peele (1913).

2 Two Elizabethan Stage Abridgments: The Battle of Alcazar & Orlando Furioso, Malone Society Extra Volume, 1923.

3 Specimens of the Pre-Skakespearean Drama (1897), Vol. ii, p. 441, n. 5; cf. Dr. Greg's introduction to the Malone Society Reprint of David and Bethsabe.

4 Professor Manly divides the play into acts, following the division of the two choruses. It is perhaps safer, however, to follow the Malone Society edition, which uses scene and line division only. The latter edition is followed in this paper.

5 “The Version of the Bible Used by Peele in the Composition of David and Bethsabe,” University of Texas Studies in English, No. 8, 1928, pp. 81–87.

6 It is an interesting fact that Wyclif's Bible, which was not in print in Peele's time, is much closer to David and Bethsabe in the forms of proper names than is any other English version. This fact leads me to suspect that Peele used an early edition of the Vulgate which was similar to the Latin Bible used by Wyclif and his helpers.

7 Vv. 285–287.

8 George Peele's “David and Bethsabe,” p. 18.

9 Die Verwendung des biblischen Stoffes von David und Bathseba im englischen Drama, pp. 21–22.

10 All Biblical quotations in this paper are from the Bishops' Bible of 1568.

11 Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama, ii, 452, n. 2.

12 II Samuel, iii, 2, 3. I use the forms of proper names found in the King James Version. We may be sure that Peele read these verses because of the occurrence of Chileab in the final scene of the play, Chileab being found only in II Samuel, iii, 3.

13 David and Bethsabe, vv. 1330–1415.

14 Vv. 1703–1714.

15 Vv. 1647–1658.

16 Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama, ii, 475, n. 3.

17 Dannenberg (op. cit., pp. 24–25) has commented at some length on the ambiguity of the lines, but does not commit himself to any one interpretation.

18 For Peele's borrowings from Du Bartas, see P. H. Cheffaud, George Peele (1913), and H. Dugdale Sykes, Notes and Queries, clxvii (1924), 349–351, 368–369.